The Fantail pigeon has been a most endeared species of pigeon in the British Isles for about 400 years. It is said that the ancestors of the Fantail pigeon was recognised on the continent of Europe in about 1600 when English merchant traders worked in India to establish what was later to become the British East India Company. We may be certain that from that time onwards Fantails from India in Whites, Colours and Saddles found their way from time to time by ship to England.
In a most interesting series of reproductions from old plates, pigeon books of the 19th century and photographs of the modern-day American champions, Levi in The Pigeon shows the advancement which has been made century by century in the perfection of the modern Fantail. Broadly speaking he says that progress during some four centuries has led stage by stage to the gradual carrying upwards and backwards of the plane of the body, retrogression of the head and the perfection of the tail. This development must have proceeded steadily in India from 1600 onwards for at least two advanced Fantail types, the beginning of the modern-day Fantail probably came from India in the early half of the 1800's. Fulton's Book of Pigeons contains a clear account by a certain George Ure, of Dundee, Scotland, of the two types of Fantails which he calls English and Scottish.
It appears that the Scottish Fantails were small and excelled in carriage and action but failed somewhat in tail. Ure was actually uncertain of their origins but believed that they had come originally from India .The English Fantails lacked these properties and were coarse in the head and neck and were much larger, with hugh, flat tails that were often carried over their heads in umbrella fashion. The latter kind, Ure states, was frequently imported from Calcutta both by English and American fanciers.
In Great Britain the debate over which type, English or Scottish, represented the ideal Fantail was long in dispute, and several attempts were made to establish a standard for the breed on a basis of points evaluation of the salient characteristics.
